Egyptian TV: Free speech causes terrorism

posted at 8:19 am on July 30, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

You really have to watch this clip, archived by MEMRI, to get a full flavor of the Arab taste for conspiracy theories. The colloquy that occurs in this clip doesn’t take the form of shouting mullahs or insane cartoons or puppets on children’s shows, but between two apparently rational analysts. The takeaway? The West provokes “unusual responses” with its insistence on free speech and open criticism:

A. The goal of the enemies of Islam is to drive the 20-30 million (Muslims) out of Europe or to provoke them in a way that would lead to their banishment. If they remain in Europe, this will be dangerous, so they must leave.

Q. So you are making a very important claim – that there are intentional and premeditated provocations in order to drive the Muslims out of their current home – Europe.

A. Yes. When the offensive cartoons first appeared, it was strange to see that the button they press (to provoke) the Muslims — the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad, which are sacred to them — is the same button that is sacred to the West — freedom of speech. …

Therefore, their solution is to continue the provocation (against the Muslims) and to continue to do things that would provoke the Muslims, who would make mistakes, such as the bombings and other unusual responses.

Got it? Criticizing Islam is a “provocation”, while murdering people is merely a “mistake” or an “unusual response”. The commentators believe that Europe deliberately provokes Muslims into committing terrorist acts as an excuse to drive out the Muslims that they predict will become the majority in the next 20 years. Oddly enough, they use Bosnia as an example of anti-Muslim animus among the nations of Europe, even though NATO fought the Serbian Christians in defense of Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s.

As far as their demographic calculations go, Egyptians need better math instruction. Currently, Europe has 20-25 million Muslims — out of a total population of over 600 million people. Even if Muslims did nothing but procreate for the next 20 years, they wouldn’t gain a majority in Europe in that time frame.

The most unsettling part of this video, though, is the rational tone in which this discussion takes place. If this is the state of Arab thinking among the cognoscenti, then we have a long road ahead of us.

Even if Muslims did nothing but procreate for the next 20 years, they wouldn’t gain a majority in Europe in that time frame.

Twenty years, no. But 50-100 years, that’s a different matter, as Steyn and Bernard Lewis have argued. Compare the declining birthrates in European countries (some, such as Greece, are already below the “death spiral” point) with those of their Muslim immigrants and you’ll see the guy in the video is wrong about the time in which it will happen, not the event itself.

If this is the state of Arab thinking among the cognoscenti, then we have a long road ahead of us.

That sentence reminds me of a story a US Army officer told me about his time in Saudi Arabia as an advisor to the Saudi army. Rational, educated Saudi officers would come up to him, in all seriousness, and ask him why America let the Jews run our country.

The most unsettling part of this video, though, is the rational tone in which this discussion takes place. If this is the state of Arab thinking among the cognoscenti, then we have a long road ahead of us.

It is, and we do. They take themselves very seriously because this is the attitutde that they have been brought up in for many centuries.

The West at large, however, refuses (at least publicly) to acknowledge that this is the Muslim rule, not the exception.

We have no hope to stand up to the threats in this world if they continue to go unrecognized.

Take several hundred million illiterate Moslems, led by a few hundred culturally and historically illiterate “leaders” [such as the ones in this clip] and is anyone really surprised that there is such a broad chasm between fantasy and reality? Toss them into the new-Euro milleux where they are further culturally and historically aliented, not at all unlike the current youth of Europe in general, and you’ll find a lot of frustration as fantasy meets reality daily.

Is anyone really surprised with the ease of radical Islam to usurp national authority across the region and the populace falling in line eagerly?

Yes, you can wear a Brooks Brothers suit and tie, and have satellite TV broaddcasting your colloquy…but when you have no foundation in reality, nor in history, let alone international affairs, the errant message, the fantasy, is promulgated to a mass audience who nod in agreement simply because the guy on the TV screen looks nice, and hasn’t said anthing that contradicts what the local mullah said last Friday.

Free speech causing terrorism? Free speech may end up being the only thing that can save the entire region from itself. And free speech is sorely lacking in most of the region…save for perhaps Israel, Turkey or Iraq…yep, that’s pretty much where one can actually find free speech, and a free press in the region. Everywhere else it is all controlled by the government or the mullahs.

A lesson to us here in America…free speech may be the only thing that can save us from ourselves as well. The “mullahs” of the “Fairness Doctrine” in the US just dress differently than the “mullahs” in Teheran or Riyadh…

Yes, you can wear a Brooks Brothers suit and tie, and have satellite TV broaddcasting your colloquy…but when you have no foundation in reality, nor in history, let alone international affairs, the errant message, the fantasy, is promulgated to a mass audience who nod in agreement simply because the guy on the TV screen looks nice, and hasn’t said anthing that contradicts what the local mullah said last Friday.

coldwarrior on July 30, 2008 at 9:05 AM

I have the concern that coldwarrior emphasises too much the delusional aspects of the beliefs of many in the Middle East and thus underestimates that outright evil of Islam. I know horrible things are being done in the names of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, but all of these religions have elements in them that deter evil in their name. Islam has nothing to counter balance evil done in its name. I don’t think we’ll ever see peace in the Middle East unless we are willing to be honest about Islam and not simply chalk down jihad to ignorance.

Actually a plan to provoke the Muslims into mindless violence is probably a good plan. It might serve to wake the sleeping Europeans to the danger growing in their midst before it’s too late and the engine of demographics can’t be shut off.

Well, free speech does provoke terrorism by terrorists, but it also suppresses oppression by tyrants and increases freedom. Suppression of free speech provokes terrorism by terrorists, too, but it also increases oppression by tyrants and decreases freedom. I’ll take the former as I win two out of three, thank you very much.

But let’s get down to brass tacks. Free speech provokes Muslims because they believe in controlling it. They can’t win in the court of free public opinion so they kill to prevent it. It is no surprise that countries where respect for people freely speaking their mind without the worry of getting their heads chopped off are free, peaceable, democratic and prosperous, whereas where it isn’t respected, the countries are pretty much concentrated in the middle east and Arabic or, ahem, Egyptian.

The Islam of today is not the same Islam of even a few decades ago. There was a time, even in Damascus, or in Baghdad, or Cairo, that Suffism was considered the path to enlightenment, honored and revered…and today, the Wahabbis have perverted Islam to the extent that anyone other than a Wahabbi is considered a heretic. So yes, your point is indeed valid to a large degree

The lure of radical Islam has less to do with religion as it has to do with power…a power based on intimidation of the reluctant and death to heretics and unbelievers…the strong horse that drives more and more young people to radical Islam.

IN the eyes of many Moslems in the region, “peaceful” Islam over the past century has brought exactly what to most of the people in the region? More misery and exploitation by the West and the western-oriented Moslem elites and ruling classes in the region. Seeing an Israel bloom in the desert, for example, while having your own national leadership keeping you in poverty makes it easy for the radicals [and leadership as well] to cite Israel as being the root of all evil, keeping the oppressed masses oppressed, and the US as the great satan who keeps Israel alive…a wierd sort of logic, I admit, but one that has gained widespread, no, overwhelming cachet from Morrocco to Teheran.

Guys in Brooks Brothers suits and ties calmly having a discources about free speech causing terrorism should scare the bejeesus out of all of us, simply because here are apparently rational-looking people promulgating a lie, a big lie, not the bearded ulama, but guys like you and me, having a discourse that is sent out to millions…but a lie nonetheless.

70% of people in the West do not know who the prophet of Islam is, and know nothing about him

Mohammed (570-632), the founder of Islam, born in Mecca, Arabia. He was the son of Abdallah (545?-570)and his wife Amina, both of the tribe of Koreish, the ruling clan of Mecca.

-opening paragraph of the entry on Mohammed in The Universal Standard Encyclopedia (abridged vers. of the New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia), New York; 1956. Vol.16 (MEND-NEG), pp.5812-13.

I’d say that there has been no difficulty in learning about Mohammed in the West for many years. By comparison, how many Islamic sources can give you detailed data (or even a short synopsis) of the lives of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Benjamin Disraeli? (I suspect the latter would not even be mentioned on principle.)

I have noticed that older reference books are less likely to sugarcoat the facts about the life of Mohammed and the rise of Islam than more recent ones. Just as they are more likely to place the various Crusades in their proper historical context. I.e., Islam launched a campaign of conquest in the 8th Century A.D.; In 1090, with their backs to the wall, the Europeans decided on a Hail Mary pass, a “spoiling attack” to take and hold Jerusalem to both secure the safety of pilgrims to the holy sites and give the Islamic armies a threat to their home territory they were compelled to honor force them to redeploy their assets defensively, taking them away from their offensives into southern Europe and the Balkans. It worked very well indeed; after several rounds over the next century, the Islamists were forced to negotiate a sort of peace. It didn’t stop them from trying to conquer the West, but it did slow them down a bit. (Today, they’re picking up speed again, for the same reason they did in the Eighth through Tenth Centuries; they sense that we are weak.)

Oh, and as for the idea of Muslims out-reproducing everyone else; a study done by WHO five years ago shows that the birth rates in most countries in the developed world plateaued in the 1990s, and are now slipping below the replacement rate, largely due to a combination of social pressures (the whole “ZPG” mentality rife in “enlightened elite” circles since the Seventies) and, simply put, higher taxes. (More taxes= less money to support children= falling birthrate= even smaller tax base in the next generation. Rome collapsed the same way- see Connections by James Burke.)
The punch line is that, also according to the WHO study, the same thing is happening in the Second and Third Worlds, as well, notably in Islamic countries- just slower. They estimated that Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iran, etc. would drop below the replacement level progressively in the next thirty years. That rather makes nonsense of this pair’s dream of “out-reproducing” everyone else and scoring a demographic victory.

Of course, if reality were ever to set in in the Islamic world, they’d really be in trouble- because they would finally have to come face-to-face with the incontrovertible facts of their culture’s total and complete failure to create anything. Except fanaticism, violence, misery, poverty, and death.

That’s not much to build a civilization on. Ask the Persians, sometime.

I have no respect for islam, and I seriously doubt that bothering people with information about their “prophet” is going to make them any more acceptable. The guy, himself, stated that islam needed to “infiltrate” Europe, which goes along with their stated goal to conquer and subjugate all others. Christianity looks to conquer, too, but not through knives, guns and bombs. They look to conquer through love and kindness. Christians and Catholics aren’t stating that they’re out to “infiltrate” continents and nations, “infiltrate” their governments, and then suddenly take off their masks and reveal their true faces, to show the people how “successful” they are. There is nothing admirable, likable, nor good in islam. These guys have merely done what they could to confirm that.

When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane, not in all things, but in religious matters. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic — for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it.
– Mark Twain

So, will they allow Christians, or say, Jews to migrate and establish neighborhoods in, lets say, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq or Palestine and not consider it an offense and an attack to their religion/culture/way of life? Will they coexist peacefully, or will they try to blow them up, along with their women and children, as often as they can?
Why is it that only Christians need to budge? Are Muslims more equal than we? Why is it that nobody is asking them these questions?

What can we say? It was our out stupid academia that started the “root causes” meme in response to Islamists slaughtering westerners. The Egyptians saw that we were buying it, so they’re just trying to copy a winning strategy. What really promotes terrorism is showing them that we will buckle under when threatened, and do stuff like put prayer rooms and foot baths in universities and teach our children in public schools how to pray to Allah.

Sorry, but I gotta say “meh”. I can’t get worked up over this. The final message of the speakers was a positive one that I agree with – the existing Muslim population should integrate, be successful, and demonstrate good values.

They have a paranoid side to their behavior, but it’s not much worse that our own BDS nuts over here. I’ll take these moderates any day over a lot of other nonsense in the Arab and Muslim media.

Which is not to say that I trust them any further than I can throw them… :-)

You’re on to some “things that cause terrorism” with the FREE SPEECH, but I must admit, I believe you go a bit on the jocular-side of things with the rest….

how about:

1) Free speech
…
9) LIBERTY (also known as God-given freedom), and
10) everything that logically follows from point 9.

McCain’s snappy ad team would be well advised to pick up on this theme – particularly in a light-hearted way – to show all the decisive “fence-sitting” Americans more clearly the differences AND CONSEQUENCES of voting for McCain vs. Barack (I know I’ll mangle even paraphrasing it, but The Obamboozler said something like:) “in the ultimate struggle, I’ll side with the Muslims” Obama.

There is no tradition of rational thinking in the Muslim world, which operates on shame and bigotry and mistrust of all. May I present the following three posts as a primer on the Arab Muslim mind, all first person narratives of what they have directly seen in the Muslim world and the conclusions they’ve drawn.